Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell. Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters.
Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success. Scamville: Zynga Says 1/3 Of Revenue Comes From Lead Gen And Oth. A big part of the debate about the lead gen scams plaguing Facebook and MySpace via social games is over how much money is being made on these “offers.”
Zynga, by far the most successful at building and monetizing these games, is now telling us exactly how much – 1/3 of total revenues, according to Andrew Trader, a co-founder of Zynga: Andrew Trader, co-founder of Zynga, said the company makes about a third of its revenue from advertising and another third from virtual goods transactions. The last third comes from companies that provide commercial offers, trading Netflix memberships and marketing surveys for in-game cash.
The Forrester Blog For Interactive Marketing Professionals. Taylor.grin.